Under the bridge downtown

Sam Steverlynck
© Agenda Magazine
15/05/2012
(Mattress Flip Baum © Zoe Strauss)

For “Running with Rocky”, Harlan Levey Projects has brought together four artists who work in public space. Artists who hope that their work will not merely encourage public participation, but also a change in outlook. In the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, Jeroen Jongeleen came up with what he calls the Art of Urban Warfare (AOUW). In his game, which has so far been played by more than 500 people all over the world, the city is declared to be a war zone. Using stencils in various colours, the players can mark out their territories. At the gallery you can see a few examples of those stencils, of little tin soldiers or Abu Ghraib prisoners, alongside a manifesto and a video about AOUW.
Jordan Seiler, too, is active on the streets. In his Public Ad Campaign he appropriates advertising sites for artistic ends as a means of criticising the ubiquity of mind-numbing advertising. He also steals advertising panels and uses them to present his own work. You can see one of them in the gallery. Seiler’s urban interventions are more convincing than the straightforward portrait of a woman that he also exhibits here. For his Superhero Project, Abner Preis takes to the streets in a Superman outfit and asks passers-by what kind of superpowers they would like to have, thereby playfully sketching a portrait of the collective dreams of a nation.
We were really impressed by Under I – 95, by the now celebrated photographer Zoe Strauss (photo). The project had its origins under a bridge in South Philadelphia where junkies and people on the margins of society gather. Strauss shows the series in the form of a slide show of 231 photographs. The result is a sort of epic poem that adds up to a poignant portrait of ugliness and human failure. But there is room for hope too. Once a year she exhibits the portraits under the bridge, so that the local population can see the photographs. She sells prints of the works in question for a mere €5 – as indeed she does in Brussels too. Which is typical of her commitment to the neighbourhood and its residents. Strauss’s work operates, like that of the other three artists, as a vehicle for social change.
Running With Rocky > 10/6, wo/me/We > zo/di/Su 13 > 19.00, gratis/gratuit/free,
HARLAN LEVEY PROJECTS, rue Léon Lepagestraat 37, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.hl-projects.com

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